Publications
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria & Evans, Craig (2025). “Not right now”: Children’s resistance during online grooming interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 249, 44-56
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.013 This is the first study to systematically identify the types of resistance and their discursive realisation in a large corpus of real online grooming conversations.
Evans, Craig & Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2025). A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of children’s and groomers’ talk in online grooming interactions. Applied Corpus Linguistics, 5(1), 100147
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acorp.2025.100147 This is the first comprehensive analysis of the discourse used in online sexual grooming, identifying the characteristics not only of groomers' language but also of children's, by examining the collocations of the most...
García-Montes, Andrea (2025). Kisses and peaches: A pragmatic perspective on how emojis are used by online child sexual groomers. Internet Pragmatics, 8(2), 214-240
https://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ip.001gar This paper examines the use of emojis in online child sexual grooming contexts. The findings show that groomers use emojis to shape their interactions, feigning a false romantic or friendly relationship with their victims.
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, García-Montes, Andrea & Pérez-Sabater, Carmen (2024). Discovered and disclosed: Examining discourses about online grooming by child-victims and their caregivers. In Sergio Maruenda-Bataller, Laura Mercé & Elena Castellano-Ortolà. Discourse, Gender and Violence: Insights from news and social media texts (pp. 151-183). Peter Lang.
This chapter presents the findings of our research into the discourses related to online sexual grooming of children and adolescents, their disclosure and discovery, in the context of a child helpline in Spain.
Pérez-Sabater, Carmen, García-Montes, Andrea, & Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2024). La representación discursiva del ciberacoso sexual infantil en relatos de menores en contextos de líneas de ayuda. ELUA, 41, 5-20
https://doi.org/10.14198/ELUA.23549 This study offers the first discourse analysis of a children's account of their experience of online sexual grooming within a Spanish therapeutic context.
Pérez-Sabater, Carmen, García-Montes, Andrea, & Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2024). Representación discursiva del ciberacoso sexual a menores: del chat a la sentencia judicial. Revista de Llengua i Dret, 82, 183-203
https://doi.org/10.58992/rld.i82.2024.4231 This article examines the discursive representation of online sexual grooming across two different genres: court rulings and chat conversations. The comparison shows that, in their rulings, judges prioritise the inclusion of...
Pérez Sabater, Carmen, Lorenzo Dus, Nuria, García Montes, Andrea & Sergio Maruenda Bataller (2024). Perfil lingüístico del ciberacoso sexual a menores en España. Ministerio del Interior. NIPO: 126-24-131-0
https://www.interior.gob.es/opencms/pdf/archivos-y-documentacion/documentacion-y-publicaciones/publicaciones-descargables/seguridad-ciudadana/Perfil-lingueistico-ciberacoso-menores_126241310_pdfWEB.pdf This report examines the linguistic profile of online sexual...
Case, Stephen , Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria & Morton, Ralph (2023). YOT Talk: Examining the communicative influences on children’s engagement with youth justice assessment processes. European Journal of Criminology, 20(1), 43-62
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370821996850 This article draws on discourse analysis to examine how children participate in the Youth Justice System in England and Wales.
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2023). Digital grooming: Discourses of manipulation and cyber-crime. Oxford University Press
https://academic.oup.com/book/45362 This book examines online sexual grooming as a form of discursive manipulation carried out in digital environments that operate at the edge of the law or outside it. It identifies and analyses in detail the online discourse of...
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, Evans, Craig, & Mullineux-Morgan, Ruth (2023). Online Child Sexual Grooming Discourse: Elements in Forensic Linguistics. Oxford University Press
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009314626 This Element addresses online sexual grooming of children on the basis that it constitutes an illegal form of communicative manipulation and, as such, a crime that research within the academic field of forensic linguistics can...
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria; Moreno-Serrano, Laura Mercé, Maruenda-Bataller, Sergio & Pérez-Sabater, Carmen (2021). Ciberacoso sexual a menores (Online Grooming) y pandemia: Actuar con el lenguaje ante la vulneración de los derechos de la infancia. Signo y Seña, 40, 166-187
https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8544772 This article, developed during the COVID‑19 pandemic (2020–2021), examines all court rulings on online grooming processed in Spain from 2003 to 2019. The findings reveal recurrent tactics in grooming...